Is there a spiral modifier?
Vertices can be rotated around an axis into a "spiral" shape using the Screw modifier.

Here I start with just a plane and an empty object with plain axis:



Then, I add the Screw modifier and use the Empty object as the AxisObject (i.e. the object that the vertices will "spiral" around):



The iterations control how many revolutions the vertices will make, the screw parameter controls the distance between "rungs" of the spiral shall we say (I believe there is an engineering term for it), the steps and render steps act like a subdivision surface modifier, smoothing out the "spiral" and the angle parameter controls how many degrees in 1 iterations (i.e. with 180 degrees as the angle 2 iterations will be required to form a complete circle). 

Here I have set the "spiral" to 6 iterations of angle 360 degrees with a screw measurement of 2.5 and a steps count of 256:



For this case i had to apply the modifier and then recalculate the normals so that the model now has lighter shading:



You can use this modifier with many different shapes to create various end results, I suggest experimentation to find the optimal shape for what you want to achieve.